Hardware & Software updates…

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Mark Urbin

Haven’t posted in a while, so going to touch a few different topics.

First off, an Apple Watch update. I ran my series 1 for four years. Upgraded to a Series 5 mainly for battery life. I was going on vacation, and didn’t want to worry about it running out of power while I was out and about for the day. I was happy with the 5. That was the last one that didn’t support blood oxygen monitoring. Didn’t worry too much about that since I already a fingertip blood oxygen and pulse reader. I ran that for four years also. I did not get the Series 9. Went for the Ultra 2. The Ultra 2 is a beast. It’s big but I really do appreciate the larger battery. I can run it all day, collect sleep data, and then just pop it on a charger for 10-15 minutes in the morning to get back to an 80% charge. I also like the larger display, especially with simple analog watch faces. Fully expect to run this for at least four years.

I got a M1 MacBook. My last one was coming up on a decade of use. It still runs, and is a viable laptop. I still use it, but the M1 is a whole new experience. I got it with extra RAM and large SSD, since I plan on using that as long as I ran the Intel based one. One of the reasons I like the MacBooks is that they are bloody tanks. The hardware is rock solid, and the OS is stable. The M1 runs Baldur’s Gate 3 just as well as my Windows 10 tower with an i9 CPU. There are times I’m tempted to make the M1 MacBook my primary system instead of my Windows tower system.

I’ve got a pair of 27″ 4K monitors, which the MacBook drives nicely. One is a direct USB C connection (which also supplies power), and the other is connected to a USB C dongle via HDMI. The dongle also where the Ethernet cable is connected. Also picked up a Mac centric keyboard and mouse. Both are Logi products. The keyboard is a MX Mechanical, with the number pad and the extra loud clicky goodness. The mouse is the MX Master S3 for the Mac. Really please with both. The mouse tracks reliably on the black surface of my desk more reliably than the Apple Magic Mouse. YMMV, but it works for me.

Yes, I’m still running Windows 10. Thankfully the system I built a few years ago doesn’t have a TPM. So I rarely get the annoying ‘you need to upgrade your hardware to install the OS I don’t want’ messages from Microsoft. I had to use a Windows 11 system for a few weeks and I did not enjoy the experience. I’ve collected a lot of data over the years, and it’s stored on my homebuilt tower system. When I do a search, that is where I want to focus, not the Interwebs. I certainly don’t want search results for products someone is paying Microsoft put at the top of the list. I figured out quickly how to remove the new search button that is located where the Start button used to be. That improved my experience right away. Another ‘feature’ I didn’t like was that I couldn’t remote desktop to the Windows 11 system using the Microsoft remote desktop app on my Mac. I had to remote desktop to my Windows 10 system, and then remote desktop from there to the Windows 11 system. Probably some sort of ‘security’ setting that Microsoft has buried somewhere. I didn’t take the time to figure it out. Just stopped using the Windows 11 system. The only actually useful feature I found was tabs in File Explorer. Something MacOS has for years.

My opinion on Windows 11 is that Microsoft is trying to take us back to the days of the Mainframe and terminals. They want all your data in their cloud, where they can generate a continuing revenue stream. Personally, I’m not fond of this concept. There are multiple good reasons for the distributed data and processor concept, not all of which are technical. I’m old enough to remember when desktop personal computers on a LAN killed the microcomputer industry, and why.

Filed under: Apple, Gadget, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Windows 10 | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Windows 8.1 blotware

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Mark Urbin

I’m not surprised by the amount of bloatware Microsoft is including in its “free” Windows 8.1 update.

I’m sad, but not surprised.

Filed under: Microsoft, Windows 8 | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

How to enable the start menu in Windows 8

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Mark Urbin

As a follow up to my earlier post on Windows 8.

This requires the use of regedit. Pretty straightforward though.

Filed under: Microsoft, Operating Systems | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Why Windows 8 will fail

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Mark Urbin

Oh, and fail it will. Big time.  The single driving issue behind its approaching and certain failure is the Metro Desktop.

Metro clearly defined as a touch screen interface and it is just bloody awful to use with a mouse and keyboard.  Really, it’s truly horrible.

To make it worse, you can’t launch your apps from the desktop, unless you pin them to the taskbar or use a third party app launcher.

Yes, that’s right.  You will have to use a third party app launcher because the idiots at Microsoft have been drinking their own marketing Kool-Aid ™ and have removed the start menu from the desktop.

Now if you are one of those people who think Facebook (where you are the product) is the entirety of the Internet, then you will probably be cool with Metro.

Here is a video that makes it pretty clear that Microsoft expects Windows 8 users to buy new hardware.  Expensive hardware with hardware graphics accelerators and touch screen monitors.

Didn’t these clowns learn anything from Vista?

If the new OS requires expensive new hardware, corporate customers are not going to want to adopt.  Why should they? Windows 7 (or XP for those who are still using it) runs their applications, the employees know how to use it, and they don’t have to spend money on new hardware.

In case the Microsoft execs haven’t noticed, the economy is still bad, and companies are looking for ways to cut costs.  IT is not going to sign off on new hardware just so the rank & file employees can directly access Twitter and Angry Birds from the Metro Desktop.

Windows 7 was a nice apology for Vista, but it looks like Windows 8 will be the reincarnation of Vista.

Good luck with that.

Filed under: Microsoft, Operating Systems | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Tech Tip of the Day

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Mark Urbin

This one comes from Crystal and is IMNSHO bloody well spot on!

I was just thinking: If you’re viewing the internet with Internet Explorer, you’re doing it wrong.

Yup, I’ve been using Opera, Firefox & Chrome for years.  I tried using the IE the other day, and the thing just felt broken.    Just bad UI experience.

Filed under: Internet | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

I’ve taken the Windows 7 plunge

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Mark Urbin

I’ve got Windows 7 Professional 64 bit on my desktop and copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit on my laptop.  I’m pretty happy so far, the plug and play works quite well, with a couple of noticable exceptions.

First off is my Wireless Laser Desktop 3000 keyboard, which I’m not using to type this because the damn thing is missing keystrokes, which it never did when I was running XP.  Top that off with none of the fancy extra keys work running under Windows 7.  Yes, I did to Microsoft and downloaded the latest drivers, which are listed as Windows 7 compatible.  Annoyance factor is high here, even more so because it is bloody Microsoft hardware.

The second is my Microtek scanner.  It’s a few years old and is still in great shape.  Microtek support claims it will work if you jump though the right hoops in the right order during install.  I haven’ t tried their latest series of hoops yet.

Third is my Bose Companion 5 speakers.  I love these things.  Great sound, but every time Windows 7 finds something it doesn’t like and asks me if it’s OK to run, not only does the screen dim, but it kills the sound! I have to power cycle the Bose system to get my sound back. My work around has to been to hook my iPhone up to the speakers and play the music loaded on that.  A bit of bummer since it is a subset of the music loaded on my desktop.

I’ve got a few old games that won’t run under Window 7 (64 bit) either, but I don’t play them that often anyway.   I’ve got an old desktop that was running a RC version of Win7 that I should scrub and load XP on to deal with stray stuff like that.

Filed under: Microsoft, Operating Systems, Windows7 | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Upgrading from Windows7 Beta to the RC

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Mark Urbin

I upgraded from Windows7 Beta to the RC today.  Microsoft wants a clean install, but I decided to try this hack I found at Life Rocks 2.0.

It’s really pretty straight forward.

1 Download the ISO and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2 Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3 Browse to the sources directory.
4 Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5 Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. You need to change the value to 7000 as it is the beta version build number.
6 Save the file in place with the same name.
7 Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

1 Download the ISO and burn the ISO to a DVD.

2 Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).

3 Browse to the sources directory.

4 Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.

5 Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. You need to change the value to 7000 as it is the beta version build number.

6 Save the file in place with the same name.

7 Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

I had already burned a boot DVD from the RC ISO, so I just copied that on a 8 gig thumb drive, and modifed the file in question.  I then plugged that drive in my Windows7 Beta system and ran setup.exe from the thumb drive.

The only hitch was that RC didn’t like the $25 sound card I had installed to work with the BETA release.  I’ll check for updated drivers later.

Filed under: Microsoft, Operating Systems, Windows7 | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

The end of the Vista Era

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Mark Urbin

The Vista OS has not been good for Microsoft.  Pushed out quickly into the supply chain, new Vista users found a very different GUI, old reliable programs that would no longer run, digital music they had purchased would no longer play due to DRM issues, and a new version of Office that required a fair amount of effort to find old familiar tasks. 

Then there was the brutal ad campaign from Apple, including the one with my old High School classmate, Mary Chris Wall. 

Microsoft has been working hard on a replacement OS, called Windows 7.  The Windows 7 team learned from the mistakes of Vista, and trimmed a lot of useless code, making it much more efficent. In addition, they have worked to expand their driver coverage, which was severly lacking when Vista was released.

Now the rumor is that Microsoft will stop selling Vista once Windows 7 is released.  It seems that Microsoft would like to forget about Vista, and hide in the same hole that they dropped the Windows Millennium OS in.

Filed under: Microsoft, Operating Systems, Windows7 | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

Microsoft rumored to announce their own smartphone

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Mark Urbin

Microsoft has been in the smartphone business for a while, but only as a software vendor with their WinCE OS (ok, so Microsoft calls it “Windows Mobile” now, but the WinCE name is so descriptive).  

There are rumors circulating that Microsoft will be announcing their own smartphone hardware.

Microsoft already produces hardware, the Zune being the closest to what they need for a smartphone platform.  How the current hardware vendors who sell phones with the Microsoft smart phone OS will react to Microsoft starting to compete with them in the hardware arena.

Filed under: cell phone tech, Microsoft, Smart Phone, tech rumors | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Microsoft to repeat a Vista mistake in Windows7

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Mark Urbin

One of the serious problems with Vista was the half dozen plus versions.  That caused market confusion as well as code bloat, since every version had the same code with features locked out in the lower end versions.

It looks like nobody has explained exactly what is wrong with this to the marketing folks at Microsoft because they are about to repeat the same mistake with Windows7.

Filed under: Bad Customer Service, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Windows7 | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

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